Tank News and Blog

Posts Tagged ‘PR’

I have no idea

15-05-2012 | TankPR | Public Relations

I never wanted to be in PR when I first started work in a PR and ad agency. Advertising was cooler, with mad ideas, pretty pictures, sharp straplines, lots of drinking at work (it was 1998 or thereabouts) and lots of obscure creativity that only had to fight its way past the client to be used.

It was hard to be creative in PR I thought – as you had to not only get the ideas by the client, but then be used as news in someway after you’d convinced a journalist. Not an easy task.

It’s all changed now as, with social media, you can create the madness again and it will be used as: a. it’s somewhat expected and b. you create your own channels and aren’t restricted by someone else’s definition of ‘creative’ or ‘news’.

One thing that has always been relevant though is the need for whatever idea you create to inspire, educate or sell your client’s product or service, or simply raise positive awareness.

Good creative PR ideas are still hard to come by though. You often draw a blank if you have high standards (or just creative angst), trying to edge away from bought in celebrity, entertainment or pure staging. You want the idea to be simple and for people to just get it, print it, share it and take you up on it. You also want it to be extremely clever and to fill others with rage that they didn’t think of it first!

For me, I was truly inspired when judging a PR award recently – an idea called ‘Venison Ice Cream’ (Google it) was generated to push the hunting season in Scotland. I’m not mad keen on the idea of shooting Scottish beasties for fun, but the PR idea of crafting an ice cream to celebrate and encapsulate the idea was wondrous. I almost went for the blunderbuss myself when others suggested this wasn’t shortlistable – but good sense prevailed and the agency with the idea won.

So why is it good? It’s easy to explain to a journalist. It’s fun. It’s soooo simple. It works on many levels, linking with other aspects of the season. It’s memorable and it has a news hook, as it’s both interesting and an oxymoron.

So why am I writing this? We lost out on a huge pitch today as, on this occasion, the winning agency had better ideas. We didn’t come up with a ‘Venison Ice Cream’ idea, as we thought that a more straightforward, proven approach was required to drive steady footfall and sales for the client. We know our ideas would have worked, but creativity won on the day and I’m glad it did. It reminded me that my mouth, words and love of the media may have influenced my career direction, but it’s the ad man with his obscure ideas in me and the team that takes us the extra mile on occasion and gets us excited about what we do. He wasn’t there last week, but he will be back with a vengeance next week.

Trevor

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Tank PR strengthens portfolio with Versaclimber UK

17-05-2011 | Martin | Tank PR News

Nottingham PR agency Tank PR is continuing its successful start to 2011 by announcing another new account win.

Tank PR has been awarded the public relations brief from fitness company Versaclimber UK, which will see the team helping to promote Versaclimber’s range of specialist exercise equipment, including Versaclimbers and Versapulleys, to consumers, businesses and sports clubs across the country.

As part of the brief, Tank PR will also be handling all of Versaclimber’s social media activity, whilst helping to publicise the Stourbridge-based company’s new website www.versaclimber.co.uk.

Commenting on Tank PR’s appointment, Versaclimber UK’s managing director Neil Kelford said:

“Tank PR not only has a great deal of experience in the leisure sector – its team also have great social media skills that we need to market our brand effectively for the foreseeable future. The fitness sector is an incredibly competitive one and I’m confident, that with Tank’s help, Versaclimber will cement its position as a market leader.”

The Versaclimber UK account win comes just weeks after it was announced that Tank PR was to handle PR for the Nottingham Food & Drink Festival 2011.

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Read all about it

15-04-2011 | Martin | Tank PR News

In an ironic twist of fate, the past few weeks have seen Sunday tabloid the News of the World hitting the headlines itself rather than publishing them.

The supposed ‘phone-hacking scandal’ and subsequent apology from News International has raised questions about the means used by journalists to produce the sensational headlines that the British press is renowned for.

No doubt the coming weeks will hold more revelations as further details are announced and journalistic practices are pushed even further into the spotlight.

Obviously, phone-hacking and scandal are far removed from the world of a Nottingham PR agency, but it does go to prove one thing – no organisation is exempt from needing the services of a good PR agency from time-to-time!

Martin

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2011: The year of the tweet

05-01-2011 | TankPR | Social Media

I’ve spent quite a lot of time on Twitter over the Christmas break. Admittedly, it’s mainly been about catching up with friends that I haven’t had chance to see in person and commenting on the festive goings-on over the past few weeks, but it’s also helped to reinforce the importance of Twitter for businesses.

Many have been using their allotted 140 characters to reinforce their post Christmas sale offerings and festive branding messages. This has an obvious benefit for B2C companies, providing an instant, and free form of direct marketing, but Twitter’s advantages for B2B organisations shouldn’t be overlooked either.

It’s the perfect way to engage with potential new leads on a more informal basis, injecting some personality into your corporate image. It sits nicely alongside the likes of Linkedin as a network-building tool, allowing you to engage directly with some of the country’s biggest brands.

Twitter also has the ability of driving web traffic, either directly to your own site or to articles relating to your field of expertise. And, of course, the PR value of Twitter is ever increasing. Not only have I seen it establish individuals as thought-leaders, but I’ve also seen some of our most impressive pieces of national and trade coverage come from a single tweet – you should never forget how many leading journalists are active Twitter users.

In terms of the economy, it’s safe to say that the country will hardly be back on an even keel in 2011, and the next 12 months are bound to be spent by many clawing their way back to stability, so businesses will be looking at the best and most cost-effective ways of publicising themselves. This is why I believe that Twitter will continue to expand in terms of business use, presenting new opportunities without impacting on the all-important budgets.

For those of you venturing into the world of Twitter, one word of warning – remember that it should be considered as an important part of your marketing campaign. Be an active user, follow the right people, engage with them and take time to plan tweets. Although it’s important to present a degree of personality, always keep at the forefront of your mind that you’re representing your company and your brand image.

So, if you’re looking to make a New Year’s resolution for your business, you could do a lot worse than Twitter.

Happy tweeting in 2011!

Martin

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Online PR – The middle ground?

30-09-2010 | TankPR | Tank PR News

Within the public relations industry, there is a growing demand for online PR. However, we have started to see a cross over of industries as SEO companies and PR agencies fight for the lucrative online sector. Can there really be only one winner?
What is SEO?

SEO is search engine optimisation. Most simply put, it involves tweaking websites to make them easily seen by Google, which will then in turn place the website higher in search results for the keywords you have done work towards. Google wants to return the most relevant results for key terms so the point is to help Google see how much more relevant your site is over your competitors.

SEO is made up of two parts: on-page and off-page SEO.

Clearly, on-page SEO consists of writing Google-friendly content, including the most relevant key terms, which will also appear in your meta information etc. Of course, your website should also have been built so virtual spiders can crawl and extract information easily. Without FPT access, the public relations professional would not normally have a role to play in this aspect.

Off-page SEO is mainly link generation with the best links having a dofollow attributes which includes your key terms in the anchor text. This is where PR people can have a substantial impact. To get your client’s story in a national newspaper is great for traditional PR but for SEO, the aim is to get a link to the client’s website from the newspaper’s website and you will have hit the SEO jackpot. Afterall, the Telegraph’s website has a page rank of 8, the Guardian boasts a page rank of 9 and The Sun has a very respectable page rank of 7. It is well known that links from website with high page rank are more valuable than those from sites with low or no page rank. A persuasive public relations person can get the links that SEO people dream of.

What is online PR?

Again, simply put, online PR is managing a company’s reputation online. This can be done best with social media as companies can create a meeting place for customers who like a brand to discuss products/promotions etc in a social environment that the customer views as their territory e.g. platforms such as Facebook. The great thing about this for brands is that customers let down their guard in this arena, they have time to browse and are relaxed enough to make impulse buys.

SEOs often jump on this task, as it is easy, right? You set up the Facebook page, put a button on the website and let customers come forth and gush about how much they love the client’s brand and we’ll drop in occasionally and use it as a free broadcasting channel. Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy.

Some SEOs get it right and they’re the ones who understand about how social media works and encourage discussion and interaction. Those who get it wrong waste an opportunity for businesses to connect with customers and clients at best. At worst, they create a public relations nightmare that spills off the Internet into a calamity in the traditional media.

The trouble is that not every public relations agency has embraced the Internet. Amazingly, some prefer to stay out and wish not to adapt to the changing times. Unfortunately, this is not a strategy to adopt if you wish to be operating in 5-10 years time.

Separately, SEO and PR have a huge amount to offer clients looking to expand their businesses online. Is the middle ground of online PR a space to be fought over or an opportunity to work together? Part of the battle is that anyone can say they are a ‘Social Media Guru’ and all that will be achieved is a bit of messing around on Twitter with the client losing out. Weeding out the charlatans is the first challenge! Reputation is everything in PR.

Public relations agency Tank PR works with Nzime on several online projects. Based in Nottingham, the two companies work together to ensure that clients get the best deal – amazing websites that are well optimized for search engines backed up with amazing PR.

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